Analytic philosophy has been developing in China for over a century, and philosophers shaped by the analytic tradition have grown into an important philosophical community in China. The views of contemporary analytic philosophers in China on central philosophical issues and their similarities and differences with analytic philosophers in English-speaking countries have not been systematically investigated. Bourget and Chalmers have conducted two large-scale online questionnaire surveys on analytic philosophers in English-speaking countries. Inspired by their studies, a survey on analytic philosophers in (...) China was performed. It is found that philosophers in China had no agreement on most issues. According to the comparative analysis with the results of Bourget and Chalmers’ second survey, there were significant differences in views as well as thinking styles between analytic philosophers in China and English-speaking countries. And these differences may be partially explained by cultural factors and academic environments. (shrink)

This article introduces the little-studied figure of Saigusa Hiroto, a twentieth century Marxist philosopher who reconstructed the history of technical thought in Japan. The article focuses on Saigusa’s thought between 1939 and 1942, contextualizes his thinking in relation to the technology controversy of the 1930s and presents his critique of the dualism between spiritual and technological culture. Saigusa defines technology as a “means as a process” and not a skill or system of things. The author argues that Saigusa’s notion of (...) “means as a process” dislocates the idea of Western technology as superior to Eastern technology, paving the way for current debates in the field of post-European philosophies of technology. (shrink)

To explain Paulin J. Hountondji’s intellectual trajectory, I offer a critical account of his conception of the relationship between science and philosophy. Mapping the shift from his well-known critical writings on ethnophilosophy to his later work on scientific dependency is possible only if we recognize that Hountondji conceives of philosophy as essentially a theory of science (Wissenschaftslehre). Adequately characterizing Hountondji’s metaphilosophical orientation, however, requires greater specificity. The two most influential philosophers on Hountondji’s conception of the relationship between science and philosophy, (...) Edmund Husserl and Louis Althusser, would both have assented to the claim that philosophy is fundamentally a Wissenschaftslehre. However, they each adhered to different (and indeed contradictory) understandings of this claim. While Hountondji explicitly recognizes the dual influence of Husserl and Althusser on his conception of philosophy as a theory of science, he does not attempt to resolve the contradictions between Husserl’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and science and Althusser’s conception of that relationship. By examining Hountondji’s relatively neglected later writings on scientific dependency, it becomes clear that his emphasis on the significance of the history and sociology of science points toward an Althusserian conception of philosophy qua theory of science rather than a Husserlian conception of what it is for philosophy to be a Wissenschaftslehre. (shrink)

1. Dialectic, in the sense of Hegel and Marx, is a dynamic process in which contradictions arise and are aufgehoben—an impossible word to translate into English, since it means both removed and pre...

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel offers the following verdict on Spinoza’s ontology: “According to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone. Therefore, the allegations of those who accuse Spinoza of atheism are the direct opposite of the truth; with him there is too much God” (Hegel 1995, vol. 3, 281-2). It is not easy to dismiss Hegel’s grand pronouncement, since Spinoza indeed clearly affirms: “whatever is, is in God” (E1p15). Crocodiles, porcupines (and your thoughts about (...) crocodiles and porcupines) are all in God. There is nothing that is not in Spinoza’s God. Spinoza defines God at the very opening page of the Ethics, and the definition (and its explication) unfold in three successively elucidatory steps: First, Spinoza characterizes God as “a being absolutely infinite [ens absolute infinitum]. Then, he spells out this characterization: “i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence” (E1def6). Finally, Spinoza adds an explicatio to the entire definition: “I say absolutely infinite, not infinite in its own kind; for if something is only infinite in its own kind, we can deny infinite attributes of it; but if something is absolutely infinite, whatever expresses essence and involves no negation pertains to its essence.” Throughout his philosophical career Spinoza plays with the precise formulation of this definition; its core remains pretty stable, though the small variations might indicate attempts to explore alternative nuances (see, for example, KV II.1; I/19; Ep. 2; IV/7; Ep. 83; IV/335). (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s philosophical engagement with Spinoza spreads over many fronts, and an adequate – not to say, complete – treatment of the topic, should cover at least the following issues: Schopenhauer’s critique (and misunderstanding) of Spinoza’s pivotal concept of causa sui; Schopenhauer’s claim that Spinoza confused reason [ratio] and cause [causa]; the relationship between Schopenhauer’s and Spinoza’s monisms; the eminent role that both philosophers assign to causality; and finally, Schopenhauer’s view of the world as a macroanthropos, as opposed to Spinoza’s attack (...) on anthropomorphic thinking. An attempt to reconstruct a genuine philosophical dialogue between Schopenhauer and Spinoza should begin by setting the record straight and clarifying the former’s mis-readings of the latter (and there are quite a few of this kind ). We could also benefit from comparing Schopenhauer’s reception of Spinoza’s with that of Schopenhauer’s German contemporaries. Regrettably our space here is limited and so if we wish to treat any of the issues in any depth, we must restrict the scope of the current chapter. For this reason, I have decided to concentrate on two central issues: animal rights (Part I) and evil (Part II). These issues are, clearly, at least as important as the others listed above. (shrink)

At the center of Catherine's Malabou's study of Hegel is a defense of Hegel's relation to time and the future. While many readers, following Kojève, have taken Hegel to be announcing the end of history, Malabou finds a more supple impulse, open to the new, the unexpected. She takes as her guiding thread the concept of “plasticity,” and shows how Hegel's dialectic—introducing the sculptor's art into philosophy—is motivated by the desire for transformation. Malabou is a canny and faithful reader, and (...) allows her classic “maître” to speak, if not against his own grain, at least against a tradition too attached to closure and system. Malabou's Hegel is a “plastic” thinker, not a nostalgic metaphysician. (shrink)

This article locates Hegel’s understanding of the nature of knowledge in various contexts (Hegel’s logical system, Kantian idealism, the Enlightenment ideal of encyclopaedia) and applies it specifically to his systematic classification of histories. Here Hegel labels Herodotus an “original” historian, and hence incapable of the broader vision and self-reflexive method of a “philosophical” historian like Hegel himself. This theoretical classification is not quite in accord with Hegel’s actual appropriation of material from Herodotus’s narrative for his own purposes. These appropriations point (...) in complex ways to dimensions of the “Father of History” which are proto-Hegelian, as well as to other dimensions which are not. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's Either-Or is a book about the choice between aesthetic, ethical, and religious approaches to life. I show that Either-Or also contains a proposal for philosophy of science, and in particular, about the ideal epistemic state for human beings. Whereas the Cartesian-Hegelian tradition conceived of the ideal state as one of detached deliberation -- i.e. "seeing the world as it is in itself" -- Kierkegaard envisions the ideal state as the achievement of equilibrium between the "spectator" and "actor" aspects of (...) the human being. Kierkegaard's proposal thus sets the stage for Niels Bohr's "epistemological lesson of quantum mechanics". (shrink)

This article examines Marx’s earliest writings, especially his doctoral dissertation on “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature” and the notebooks he kept while preparing it. Previous commentators on this material have tended to take one of two approaches: either they have used it to associate Marx with an expansive and abstract Western Tradition of philosophical inquiry, or they have located it in the narrow context of the intellectual culture of the German Vormärz. Here I seek to (...) mediate between these extremes. These documents, I argue, suggest that Marx was less a part of a Western Tradition, or a set of abstract normative debates that ostensibly stretches from the ancients to modernity, than of what I call Latin Culture, or a Latin-speaking culture that was inscribed in practices, norms, and institutions, and that persisted in Europe from late antiquity into the nineteenth century. Placing Marx’s early writings in this context helps explain some of the tensions that characterise his thought and to clarify the practical consequences of what might otherwise appear as purely theological and metaphysical speculations. (shrink)

In the times where the predominant description of the world has become that of the so-called “post-truth” reality, all the questions on the possibilities of leading a fulfilled life, the life of εὐδαιμονία, seem to have become irrelevant, if not unattainable. This is due to the reason that εὐδαιμονία, as such, intrinsically involves a connection with the truth and the universal. On the other hand, the concept of a fulfilled life should not exclude subjective happiness. The latter has always been (...) intertwined with the concept of pleasure. Nonetheless, what the contemporary world-view has to offer is not at all the compound of pleasure and truth, the dialectics of particular and the universal. Instead, it is a paradigm of life led by undifferentiated particular pleasures, to be desired and pursued for the sole purpose of their being pleasurable. Paradoxical as it may seem, the issue is not a new one. The first aim of this paper is to critically assess the Epicurean concept of pleasure. Rather than taking an a priori moralistic stance, I intent to point out that the concept in question is intrinsically, i.e., theoretically problematic. My second aim is to critically analyze the hedonistic world-view as such assessing it primarily as a political attitude. In addition, I hope to show that in contrast to ancient hedonism, which I regard as a type of unintentional individual escapism, contemporary hedonism has transformed into a systematically induced and politically desired ideology of activism prevention. Phrased in the context of Platonic terminology, it has become the discourse of the Cave. Thus, beginning with the sources analysis, the paper is mainly conceived as a critique of an idea targeting both its early and its ultimate manifestations. (shrink)

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel develops a subtle analysis of Megarian paradoxes: the Liar, the Veiled Man and the Sorites. In this paper, we focus on Hegel's interpretation of...

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for a dialetheist (...) answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Sixth Argumentor Conference held in Oradea/Nagyvárad, Romania, 11–12 September 2020.

We want to study the expansion of subjectivity in Descartes' philosophy, so we all know that subjectivity is the foundation of the human self in the realms of epistemology, cosmology, ethics, art, religion, and science. This article shows that Descartes's general skepticism led him to subjectivity because after he doubted everything, he found himself as the first and only certain being, and then he considered the principle of "I think, therefore I am" (_Cogito_) as the foundation of cognition and every (...) being in the world, including the being of God and corporal substances. Descartes considered the human reason to be independent of everything other than reason itself respecting the matter (problem) of cognition, and, in this direction, he resorts to the mental innate concepts to shape the scientific construction itself. Subjectivity (the human self) embraces all aspects of Descartes' philosophy, and in this philosophy, the whole world appears as a set of objects, and the universe (cosmos) has no other truth than the image that the human being made from it. Therefore, the only real subject is nothing but the human self. Descartes' subjectivity changed the course of modern philosophy, and later philosophers philosophized in that direction. Descartes's philosophy, and in particular his epistemology, is based on the mind. It begins with the mind and continues with the mind, and ends with the human mind. And this is the culmination of the broad scope of subjectivism in René Descartes's philosophy, and our goal was to emphasize the breadth of subjectivism. (shrink)

Pythagoras’s number doctrine had a great effect on the development of science. Number – the key to the highest reality, and such approach allowed Pythagoras to transform mathematics from craft into science, which continues implementation of its project of “digitization of being”. Pythagoras's project underwent considerable transformation, but it only means that the plan in knowledge is often far from result.

This paper summarized the basic results of the philosophical discussion that was held in the Institute of Philosophy of Russian Academy of Sciences on April 25, 2019. The authors had been the main opponents of Andrey Krushinskiy approach, according to which there are processes of monopolization of discourse domain by the European conceptual apparatus of philosophy in the contemporary Chinese philosophy. In other words, in opinion of Andrey Krushinskiy, this “conceptual Eurocentrism” is the future of every possible attempt of philosophizing (...) in any national philosophical tradition, and there is no possibility to philosophize outside this European philosophical terminology. This approach is to be balanced by two critical arguments, which can be conventionally named as “civilization bound argumentation” and argumentationad professionem. The first one states that all things which can confirm Krushinskiy approach have extrinsic value, not philosophical or conceptual. And the second one states that the double professionalism, which could include both European approach and the absolute competency in non-European tradition, compared with the level of its representative, is beyond the possibilities of any human mind. Demonstration of this assertion is accomplished on the base of investigation of Sanskrit by European scholars. (shrink)

Hegel experienced several personal, political, and professional crises during his life. These crises impacted his dense theory about the importance of rational self-reflection in the organic character and evolution of law. The article argues that Hegel’s Preface to the Philosophy of Right manifests how one philosopher came to terms with the personal, social and political crises in which he found himself. In particular, the article outlines the central themes of the Preface and then explicates the important notion of Bildung in (...) Hegel’s theory – an Enlightenment notion that Hegel absorbed from his own formal education. After retrieving Hegel’s reading of the virtues and flaws in Kant’s theory of law, the article then explicates Hegel’s understanding of freedom. The article then reviews the local politics in which Hegel found himself before, during and after Napoleon’s defeat. The article then turns to his professional rivalries with Jacob Fries and Friedrich Savigny. The article argues that the personal animosities shaped parts of his Preface. These complex influences and concerns explain why Hegel waited 20 years to publish his theory of law. Hegel’s Preface comes to terms with the crises of his own times. (shrink)

In this paper, I study one aspect of the philosophical encounter between Spinoza and Hegel: the question of the reality of time. The precise reconstruction of the debate will require a close examination of Spinoza's concept of tempus (time) and duratio (duration), and Hegel's understanding of these notions. Following a presentation of Hegel's perception of Spinoza as a modern Eleatic, who denies the reality of time, change and plurality, I turn, in the second part, to look closely at Spinoza's text (...) and show that Hegel was wrong in reading Spinoza as denying the reality of duration and change. Ironically, Hegel's misreading of Spinoza as denying the reality of duration and change has been compensated for by a reading of Hegel as denying the reality of time by one of Hegel's most prominent followers, John Ellis McTaggart. I discuss McTaggart's reading of Hegel's Logic in the final part of the paper. (shrink)

It has often been noted that Leo Strauss developed his understanding of political philosophy through a critical engagement with Heidegger. Yet most analyses focus on Strauss’s American works while neglecting his earlier response during the crisis years of the Weimar Republic. The article seeks to overcome this limitation by ‘deconstructing’ Strauss’s American definitions of political philosophy in light of both his Weimar understanding of politische Wissenschaft and his 1922 discovery of Heidegger’s Aristotle. I argue that Strauss’s conception of political philosophy (...) originated in Heidegger’s subversion of the traditional distinction between theory and praxis. I thus propose a way to read Strauss from the start following his own changing views of that distinction. (shrink)

Socrates famously compares himself to a midwife in Plato'sTheaetetus. Much less well known is the developed metaphor of pregnancy at the centre of the initiation ritual that begins Brahmanical education. In this ritual, calledUpanayana, the teacher is presented as becoming pregnant with the student. TheArthavavedastates:The teacher leads the student towards himself, makes him an embryo within; he bears him in his belly three nights.

The title of this critical notice is provoked by a remark Professor Armour makes in Chapter IX, “Metaphysics and the Resolution of Conflict,” ofBeing and Idea. If we become Spinozists, “Perhaps the concept of God will emerge clearly and orient our lives, or perhaps, on the other hand, we will be able to see how to make God go away and leave us alone”. As the title indicates, I shall argue here that Armour's book achieves the latter, and not the (...) former, end. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's preoccupation with a separation between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ runs through his work and is widely thought to belong to his rejection of Hegel's idealist monism. Focusing on The Concept of Irony and Either/Or, I argue that although Kierkegaard believes in various metaphysical distinctions between inside and outside, he nonetheless understands the task of the philosopher as that of making outside and inside converge in a representation. Drawing on Hegel's philosophy of art, I show that Kierkegaard's project in (...) both of these books is the aesthetic project of revealing the inner essence of something in its outward appearance. Kierkegaard's portrait of Socrates in The Concept of Irony is a phenomenology of the spirit of irony. My interpretation adds a new dimension to our understanding of Kierkegaard's aesthetics and his relation to Hegel; it presents him as a follower of Plato, whom he is usually thought to have dismissed; and it uncovers a deep connection between Kierkegaard's first two books, which are never read in conjunction. (shrink)

The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...) readings of how Spinoza understands not just the nature of essence, but also the nature of being, reason, striving, definitions, and different kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

I reject the traditional picture of philosophical withdrawal in the Hellenistic Age by showing how both Epicureans and Stoics oppose, in different ways, the Platonic and Aristotelian assumption that contemplative activity is the greatest good for a human being. Chrysippus the Stoic agrees with Plato and Aristotle that the greatest good for a human being is virtuous activity, but he denies that contemplation exercises virtue. Epicurus more thoroughly rejects the assumption that the greatest good for a human being is virtuous (...) activity. He maintains that the greatest good for a human being is the tranquility that virtuous activity always and contemplative activity sometimes brings about. (shrink)

Hegel famously criticizes Kant’s resolution of the antinomies. According to Sedgwick, Hegel primarily chastises Kant’s resolution for presupposing that concepts are ‘one-sided’, rather than identical to their opposites. If Kant had accepted the dialectical nature of concepts, then (according to Sedgwick) Kant would not have needed to resolve the antinomies. However, as Ameriks has noted, any such interpretation faces a serious challenge. Namely, Kant’s first antinomy concerns the universe’s physical dimensions. Even if we grant that the concept of the finite (...) is necessarily related to that of the infinite, the physical universe cannot both have and lack a temporal beginning. I argue that Hegel neither adopts Sedgwick’s view that Kant’s antinomies require no resolution nor absurdly accepts that the physical universe both has and lacks a temporal beginning. Instead, Hegel proposes a sophisticated resolution of Kant’s first antinomy (including its physical aspect) that depends on Hegel’s theory of the Absolute. (shrink)

There is no question that Fichte's theory of conscience is central to his system of ethics. Yet his descriptions of its role in practical deliberation appear inconsistent, if not contradictory. Many scholars have claimed that for Fichte conscience plays a material role by providing the content of our moral obligations—the Material Function View. Some have denied this, however, claiming that conscience only plays a formal role by testing our moral convictions in any given case—the Formal Function View. My aim in (...) this paper is to offer a new contribution to this debate. I begin by supplying further evidence in support of the view that conscience only plays a formal function in Fichte's ethics. Then I call attention to a deeper problem this view faces, namely, that it invites an infinite regress by making one's conviction a matter of higher-order reflection. The key to overcoming this threat, I argue, lies in Fichte's doctrine of feeling, whereby the criterion of one's conviction lies, not in a cognitive state, but in an affective state. In closing, I discuss the relevance of Fichte's theory for current debates over the nature of moral error and moral deference. (shrink)

Examines Hegel’s unique understanding and assessment of capitalism as an economic, social, and cultural phenomenon.

My purpose in this essay is to suggest, via case study, that if Anglo-American philosophy is to become more inclusive of non-western traditions, the discipline requires far greater efforts at self-scrutiny. I begin with the premise that Confucian ethical treatments of manners afford unique and distinctive arguments from which moral philosophy might profit, then seek to show why receptivity to these arguments will be low. I examine how ordinary good manners have largely fallen out of philosophical moral discourse in the (...) west, looking specifically at three areas: conditions in the 18th and 19th centuries that depressed philosophical attention to manners; discourse conventions in contemporary philosophy that privilege modes of analysis not well fitted to close scrutiny of manners; and a philosophical culture that implicitly encourages indifference or even antipathy toward polite conduct. I argue that these three areas function in effect to render contemporary discourse inhospitable to greater inclusivity where Confucianism is concerned and thus, more broadly, that greater self-scrutiny regarding unexamined, parochial western commitments and practices is necessary for genuine inclusivity. (shrink)

What is the relationship between knowledge and ethics? Does what we know and the reason that secures knowledge determine ethical responsibility, or might ethical responsibility itself awaken and animate the enterprise of knowing? The dissertation affirms the priority of ethics by juxtaposing two accounts of the relationship between truth and goodness. It critiques Hegel's systematic conception of absolute knowing by showing that this knowing elides the anarchical ethical demand arising from the other person. Hegel's dialectic reconciles the problem of the (...) relation with the other by transposing it to the plane of cognition where it becomes spirit's self-knowing. However, Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenological reduction of the structures of knowing exposes an ethical level of experience that both inspires and interrupts this adventure of knowing. ;After the introduction of this problematic, Chapter 1 examines the challenge that Levinas poses to Hegel, discovering in experience and subjectivity a ground where real dialogue can take place. Chapter 2 traces the reconception of subjectivity by which Hegel brings all exteriority within the experience of self-consciousness and compares this with Levinas's notion of "lived experience." In Chapter 3, I show how Levinas's account of sensibility and enjoyment resists incorporation into Hegel's notion of self-consciousness. Chapter 4 examines the encounter with the other person and explicates why Hegel's and Levinas's accounts cannot be reconciled or made to complement one another, for the non-allergic responsibility incurred in the face to face relation is inassimilable to the antagonism of the same and the other experienced as self-consciousness. Then, in Chapter 5, I trace Hegel's pursuit of a more authentic recognition of otherness through the development of the concept of spirit, paying special attention to the role of language. The ultimate accomplishment of spiritual recognition in Hegel's account is again challenged by Levinas's notion of responsibility, which signifies as an ethical "saying" apart from the "said." Finally, I contest the absoluteness of knowing without denying the dialectic that animates it by suggesting that philosophy can be maintained as a human enterprise, a pursuit of knowing that is ever subject to and interrupted by the face of the other. (shrink)

The paper offers a new account of Spinoza's conception of “substance”, the fundamental building block of reality. It shows that it can be demonstrated apriori within Spinoza's metaphysical framework that (i) contrary to Idealist readings, for Spinoza there can be no substance that is not determined or modified by some other entity produced by substance; and that (ii) there can be no substance (and hence no being) that is not a thinking substance.

Some authors have claimed that Hegel's ‘determinate negation’ should be distinguished from ‘logical’ or ‘formal’ negation, that is, from a view of negation as a contradictory forming operator. In contrast, I argue that dialectical determinate negation involves a view of negation as a contradictory forming operator, and can therefore count as formal negation in every respect. However, as it is clear in contemporary glutty semantics of negation, one may distinguish between different accounts of the relationship between negation, contradiction and content. (...) I suggest that, differently from classical negation, and as glutty negation, dialectical negation has partial content. (shrink)

In one of the unpublished parts of his manuscript titled the Spicilegia, Arthur Schopenhauer presents an uncharacteristically sympathetic reading of an Aristotelian text. The text in question, De anima III. 5, happens to include the only occurrence of arguably the most controversial idea in Aristotle, namely the distinction between active and passive nous. Schopenhauer interprets these two notions as corresponding to his own notions of the ?will? and the ?intellect? or ?subject of knowledge?, respectively. The result is a unique interpretation, (...) according to which Aristotle's active nous is in fact non-intellectual: it is devoid of any interaction with intelligible objects, and hence lacks any intellectual activity. I show that this interpretation, though counterintuitive, is tenable, and that it may contribute to our understanding of Aristotle even if we do not adopt Schopenhauer's metaphysics. (shrink)

The article explores the idea that according to Spinoza finite thought and substantial thought represent reality in different ways. It challenges “acosmic” readings of Spinoza's metaphysics, put forth by readers like Hegel, according to which only an infinite, undifferentiated substance genuinely exists, and all representations of finite things are illusory. Such representations essentially involve negation with respect to a more general kind. The article shows that several common responses to the charge of acosmism fail. It then argues that we must (...) distinguish the well-founded ideality of representations of finite things from mere illusoriness, insofar as for Spinoza we can have true knowledge of what is known only abstractly. Finite things can be seen as well-founded beings of reason. The article also proposes that within Spinoza's framework it is possible to represent a finite thing without drawing on representations of mind-dependent entities. (shrink)

This paper considers the relation between the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce and the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel . While Peirce engaged with Hegel’s thought quite extensively, his often critical comments on the latter have made it hard to see any genuine common ground between the two; recent ways of reading Hegel, however, suggest how this might be possible, where the connections between their respective metaphysical positions and views of the categories are explored here. Issues relating to their (...) epistemology and philosophies of languages are considered in a companion article. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay argues that retrieving insights from the ancient Stoic philosophers for Christian ethics is much more difficult than is often assumed and, further, that the “ethics of retrieval” is itself something worth prolonged reflection. The central problem is that in their ancient sense both Christianity and Stoicism are practically dense patterns of reasoning and mutually incompatible forms of life. Coming to see this clearly requires the realization that the encounter between Stoicism and Christianity is a conflict of lived traditions. (...) Precisely because we cannot simply extract Stoic insights from the lives in which they belong, the task of determining how Stoicism is useful for Christianity is exceptionally challenging. Indeed, doing justice to the Stoics has more to do with facing an alternative to Christianity than it does with appropriating insights for our own use. These points are developed in conversation with Elizabeth Agnew Cochran's recent article on the Stoic influence upon Jonathan Edwards. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of normativity in Hegel by examining the role of ‘undialectical’ resistance to dialectical development. Beginning with a general overview of dialectical normativity and what it might mean to be ‘undialectical,’ the focus then shifts to a privileged example in Hegel’s writings: Sophocles’ Antigone. The central claim of the paper is the following: The very contradictions that fuel dialectical normativity can also trap individuals within an obsolete actuality, without immediate hope of escape. Indeed, the irreducible dependence (...) of dialectical thinking upon the actions and decisions of individual consciousness expose it to the threat of continual stasis or regression. This ineliminable possibility of failure is what is here called the ‘undialectical’ moment of the dialectic, which Hegel understands rather as a negative condition of possibility of freedom and rationality. (shrink)

There is a strong intuition that for a change to occur, there must be a moment at which the change is taking place. It will be demonstrated that there are no such moments of change, since no state the changing thing could be in at any moment would suffice to make that moment a moment of change. A moment in which the changing thing is simply in the state changed from or the state changed to cannot be the moment of (...) change, since these states are respectively before and after the change; moreover, to select one of these moments over the other as the moment of change would be arbitrary. A moment in which the changing thing is neither in the state changed from nor in the state changed to cannot be the moment of change, since there are changes for which it is impossible for something to be in neither state. Finally, the moment of change cannot be a moment in which the changing thing is in both the state changed from and the state changed to, as suggested by Graham Priest and others. Even if, like proponents of this view, we are willing to accept the contradictions that the account entails, it is demonstrated that on such a model, every change would require an infinite number of other changes, every change would take an infinite amount of time, and some changes would occur without occurring at any time. Further, the model is grossly counterintuitive, with the exact nature of the counterintuitive element depending on what model of time and space one endorses. Finally, it is demonstrated that this model is incompatible with the Leibniz Continuity Condition. (shrink)

Recent literature on the Young Hegelians attests to a renewed appreciation of their philosophical and political significance. Important new studies have linked them to the literary and political currents of their time, traced the changing patterns of their relationships with early French socialism, and demonstrated the affinity of their thought with Hellenistic theories of self-consciousness. The conventional interpretative context, which focuses on the left-Hegelian critique of religion and the problem of the realisation of philosophy, has also been decisively challenged. Ingrid (...) Pepperle emphasizes instead the centrality of practical philosophy, notably Hegel's dialectic of objectification, arguing that Bruno Bauer in particular derives from this a doctrine of autonomy with politically revolutionary implications. (shrink)

In trying to reach some view regarding the philosophical exchanges that went on between F. H. Bradley and William James at the turn of the century, it is in some respects tempting to endorse Bradley's view that ‘our differences may perhaps on the whole be small when compared with the extent of our agreement’. Indeed, in most of the articles, letters and books in which the debate between these two men was carried on, one finds the protagonists claiming to be (...) mystified as to the grounds of the dispute, and to see no great distinction in their respective outlooks. (shrink)